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Author's Chapter Notes:
Lots in this chapter. Do you know how exhausting it can be to write sometimes? I feel like I ran a marathon.

Anyway, thanks to i-am-the-wolf, jaqofspades, skybound2, Capt_mackenzi, notmyself, velvetemr73 and jenniferjwva for their reviews in the last chapter. I love you all more than cookies.

Logan glanced up from the road for the first time in two hours his attention jerked to Rogue, sitting in the passenger seat, by her sharply indrawn breath. He whipped his head around the car, checking the wonder twins leaning against each other sleeping in the back and looked out all the windows before deciding that it wasn't a threat that had broken the girl's long silence. He checked the road again, on one else was driving this early anyway, and squinted at her, eyes somewhat blinded by the sunlight now pouring in through her window. She was turned almost fully in her seat, forehead leaned against the glass while the shifting sun played across her face. "You okay, kid?" he asked, worried that maybe this was the beginning of another episode.

She turned to face him, eyes lit up and a smile as big as the world on her face that dragged the corners of his mouth up slightly as well. "I never thought that I would see this again," she stated, turning back to the window and sighing happily at the sunrise. He felt his lips return to their more usual frowning position. "What do you mean? Someone out to kill you or something?" She glanced at him over her shoulder, smile having been chased away by melancholy. "Never mind," she whispered, resuming her study of the outside world. "It's nothing."

Logan sat in his seat, slightly stunned by her response. The radio was twanging out some old country ballad that he wished he could turn off so it would be easier to think, but that wasn't an option. He did his best to ignore it and focused his thoughts.

What teenage girl didn't want to talk about herself? True, out of the teenagers at the mansion he really only talked to Kitty and Jubes, but he had been around enough that he could do a study on teenage life. And girls liked to talk about everything to anyone who would listen. He knew more about some of them from just overhearing conversations then he knew about himself.

Rogue's reactions and her tendency to spout Shakespearean quotes had him pretty convinced that she had been in some shitty situations that had pushed her over an edge. Maybe he should just leave her alone? For some reason he didn't like that idea. No one her age should be shut up tight especially when they had as much fire as this girl. He was afraid being shut off would eventually douse her, turning her into an unnoticed wall ornament. Plus, he was just plain curious about her.

He remembered some of his meetings with Xavier after he had gotten out of the lab. The old man had been all about "talking it out to bleed poison from the soul". If Logan had a dollar for every time he had heard that phrase in the professor's sophisticated drone, he'd be rich enough to buy Canada, though the man did have a point. He'd eventually talked to the wonder twins about everything, though he had no idea why really, and felt freer and more like himself in the long run. If he, as badass as they come, felt better by talking, it seemed obvious that Rogue, teenage girl that she was, would benefit from it as well. But how to get her to start? He wasn't a sweet talker like Xavier and didn't think he could convince her to listen to him. He opened his mouth before his conscious mind had completely settled on an idea and let his instincts take over.

"What do you know about how people feel about mutants?" He saw her shrug out of the corner of his eye. "Evidently nothing," she admitted. "Everything I thought I knew came from my mother and we've found that she wasn't exactly honest." She flopped back in her seat. "I know nothing." She sounded defeated to his ears.

Great Logan, he thought. Way to make her feel good about herself. You're just awesome at this shit.

"Well, it's not as bad as she made it seem, but nothing's hunky dory either. Lot a people are afraid of us, but most aren't willing to go outta their way to do anything about it. Then there are some who are all about mutant equality," he found himself snorting at that. "Most of 'em are just looking for a cause to fight for. Unfortunately, there are also some people who've decided to do something about their hate. They take mutants, but aren't obvious about it, and either kill 'em or perform experiments." He felt his throat tighten but forced it to keep working. "People like the ones that got a hold of me."

Her head snapped around and her eyes locked with his. He allowed her to keep his gaze, as she seemed to be searching his face for something. Whatever it was, she must have found it because she turned back to the front, saying nothing but inclining her head, telling him to continue. He was impressed that she understood that sharing was completely outside of his comfort zone and her talking would've instantly killed it. He convinced his vocal cords to vibrate again.

"Well, they had me twice. The first time, somehow, they wiped my brain so I lost everything from my past. I got about twenty years of memories stored now. We're guessing they constantly drilled me in every form of martial art and pumped me full a steroids and other shit to 'enhance' me cuz it happened at some point in my life" It was easier to say this if he pretended he was reciting a movie plot and, since this wasn't his therapy, that's what he did. "I escaped, no idea how so don't ask, and my brain eventually kicked in again because I figured out that I wasn't living like I should. Worked my way back into society, well if you call Canada society, and started living offa my knuckles. Did that for about 15 years until I got captured again." He checked her expression, not knowing how to take it when he saw a slight glisten in her eyes. Hell, he didn't want her to cry. This was all in the past and he was supposed to be helping her. Convincing her that maybe it was better to talk shit out.

"The second time, I remember everything. They decided, since they had located me again, that they should try a new experiment to see just how well I could heal. They implanted a chip in the back of my brain so they could control my body and fused an indestructible metal to my skeleton, making my bones harder to brake so I can take more damage. They used the same metal that they had used on my claws the first time, musta found more of it somewhere, and left me in a cell alone to heal up before my test run." He felt himself smirking. "Guess they underestimated me. No one was controlling me at that time, so I used my claws and dug out the chip." Her scent picked up even more strands of horror with that so he hurried on. "Then I fought my way out of there and right into the X-Men's arms. They were there, trying to 'liberate' the mutants inside and were surprised when I walked out under my own power. Somehow the Jelly Bean," he gestured over his shoulder to the sleeping beauties in the back, "sweet talked me into coming with them. Been five years now and I wouldn't want to go back to just shifting around the continent fighting everywhere." He forced a grin. "Though I do sometimes escape to some of the old shitholes to keep the King of the Cage title."

He blew out a breath, glancing up to try to gauge Rogue's reaction to everything he had just spilled onto her. Her eyes were moving rapidly under closed lids and he was shocked and freaked out to see tears pouring down her face. "Rogue. Rogue, it's okay. I'm pissed about it sure but it's nothing to-"

"Oh, what men dare do! What men may do! What men daily do, not knowing what they do?" He ignored that, just more of her crazy coming through, and waited for he to make sense. She played with her fingers, seemingly unable to look at him "It's not you telling me about everything that's upsetting. I'm just remembering it for the first time and living something like that causes tears." She wiped her cheeks with the backs of her gloves.

What the fuck was she talking about now? "What do you mean remembering?" he ground out, patience flying out the window when he had to wait a minute for an answer. "Rogue!"

"Marie," she responded. "If you told me all that and we lived it together, I can tell you my name. It's Marie. But that's just you for you." He glanced over and raised an eyebrow. She bobbed her head once, "Gotta earn it."

He was floored at her admission and humbled by her trust, but he still wanted answers. He tried to infuse warmth in his voice. "Marie, what do you mean remembering?"

She looked up from the dashboard, eyes dry now but puffy from the tears, and blew him out of the water with her words. "When someone touches me, I get their brain." She held up her hands in a 'wait' pose. "No, that's not right. I get a copy of their brain, memories, skills and feelings. It jumps into my head and I have to get it locked into a room or sometimes the person I copied tries to take me over, especially if they're pissed or afraid."

"You mean you have my memories just floating around your head, waitin' for you to look at 'em?" He was less than thrilled with that idea for multiple reasons.

"No, I told you, I lock that copy away. If it helps with the feeling of claustrophobia, your room is bigger then everyone else's. Most of them were mean to me and tried to lock me in instead so I punish them with a closet. You just chilled in the corner until I figured out you were there and led you to your room. I let you do the decorating and now it looks like a pub with a limitless supply" she shook her head and flashed a small grin that was quickly swallowed by a look of concentration. "Normally, I only have my memories and I can't see those that are locked away unless I dig them out on purpose or someone says something that triggers one of them, like when you were talking earlier. Even though you gave me the cliffnotes version, it still woke them up. Then, there are the times when my locks aren't good enough to stop a jailbreak. That's when bad things happen"

He sat in his seat for a minute, trying to process everything she had said and translate it into something he could understand. She seemed content to ride along and wait him out. He was starting to feel like he got the gist when it sunk in that he had just forced a teenage girl to live through torture. He couldn't do anything right. "Fuck. I'm sorry kid for what you got from me. No one needs to deal with that shit."

"Why?" she was awfully calm. "Did you wake up this morning and say 'You know what I'd like to do today? I think I'll find another mutant that can leach out my memories and almost kill me just so I can make her life suck."

Evidently she wasn't going to need to attend his school of sarcasm; she seemed to have a pretty good grasp without assistance. "It's not your fault, Logan. You didn't know I was a mutant. You told me you were trying to make sure I didn't get hurt anymore during my little" she held up finger quotes for the next word "episode." That didn't really help him fell less guilty, but there was nothing he could do about what had happened. He could control the present though and try to drag more out of her because the need to know was eating away at him.

"You said earlier 'they were all mean'? Just how many people you carting around up there?" He tapped her on the top of the head over her hair, happily noticing that her flinch was less severe than some of the others had been. Progress.

"You make five," she admitted, fidgeting slightly in her seat. Logan cringed. That had to be horrible. It was bad enough that he had to deal with the Wolverine on random occurrences. Four, now five, other people in her head? That was downright claustrophobia causing.

He couldn't stop himself from asking. "Who are they?"

She turned back to face him, fingers locked together in what had to be a painful twist. His knuckles ached just looking at them. "You sure you're up for this story? If you want to know who, then you need to know how and to know how, you're stuck with getting pretty much my whole life PM. " She clarified before he could ask. "Post manifestation."

He was silent, trying to figure out how to tell her that knowing this was somehow important to him, when she jumped in again, sounding panicked. "You can say no. I would completely understand. The abridged version hasn't been written yet because I haven't figured out how to leave things out." She was rambling. He could tell that part of her didn't want to talk about it but another part wanted it all off of her chest. Well, he had a big enough chest to take it so he gave her a look that told her to get going. She looked over her shoulder, probably making sure the girls were still asleep, before settling back into her seat and staring forward for a few minutes. He gave her the time, confident that she would start when she ready.



Marie started shifting though the pieces of her life, dragging out some that had been buried for years under floorboards and forcing them all into a comprehensive timeline. She had to get this right the first time because she was convinced that she wouldn't be able to go over it again and it wasn't like she had experience talking to people. Like a long joke, a story that was told out of order often lost all meaning and she couldn't let that happen with her history because it was all she had. When she felt put together, she took a deep breath and began.

"I was born and raised for most of my life in a small farm town in Arkansas. All the neighbors had cows; we owned horses and I had so many friends to play with. Everyone knew each other's business because the town was so little. Most of the families in town had been there for generations, so my parents knew all my friends' parents. Outsiders tended to stay away because everyone was suspicious of new people. My friends and I could play outside for hours and none of our parents would be worried because the only crimes ever committed were just pranks by high schoolers so it was never anything big. We went to church every Sunday and until I was twelve I got to play in bible study instead of sitting upstairs with the adults, which was really boring.

My parents loved me. They would always talk about how I was their little princess and jokingly say I was so spoiled, which was pretty true actually. I got almost everything I asked for. Little girls always ask for a pony and never get one. Not me. I actually got a pony. My dad built me a tree house out back and mom would haul all kinds of things up there so we could have tea parties with my stuffed animals. Norbert was always my favorite." She made sure to wink at the bunny sitting on the top of her backpack at her feet as she basked in the warmth of her remembered perfect childhood. He wished her luck in the next part because it was about to get harder.

"So yeah, pretty much had the perfect childhood. When I turned twelve, like I said, I had to go upstairs and sit with the adults during mass, which was actually okay because my friend Cody moved upstairs at the same time. Up until then, we had never been really close, but we got to be better friends after the move because his parents shared a pew with mine. We started hanging out together all the time and he became my best friend over the years.

Let's fast forward because over the next three years, nothing really out of the norm happened. On my fifteenth birthday, my parents threw a huge party. I swear half the town was there. Everyone was dancing in the backyard and there was a giant pig roasting that smelled so good I thought I was going to die if I couldn't get a piece. I told Cody that he needed to distract some of the parents so I could sneak up to the spit and steal some but he told me I had to do something with him first. He wanted to give me his present. I was so excited, Cody's presents were always the best, I almost forgot about the pork. He told me that my present was upstairs in my room.


When we went up there, I looked around and saw this huge map of the United States on my wall. Cody had drawn a red line on it that followed the route we were planning on taking on a roadtrip after high school graduation in three years. He even had put green dots on all the major cities we were planning to see."

She could feel herself starting to tense up, wished that she could turn back the clock and tell that poor fifteen year old girl to just walk out. Not that leaving would have stopped her mutation from making its dŽbut but maybe it could have spared her friend.

"Cody walked me over to the wall where it was and pointed to one of the green dots. 'Do you know what these are?' he asked me. At that point, I noticed that he had a dot on our hometown too. I asked him what and he said 'these are all of the places in this country that I'm going to kiss you'. I was pretty shocked. He had never said anything about liking me like that. I was still kinda at the stage where I was indifferent to boys. Some of my friends had boyfriends, but I just didn't see the point. I had way too much fun with my friends and by myself and I didn't want to mess that up. Maybe my sexuality just hadn't woken up yet. Anyway, before I even noticed, he had me backed into the wall and was leaning into me pretty close. I tried to get my hands between us and stop him from moving forward, but he was stronger than me. I barely got out 'Cody, no!' before his lips were on mine.

It wasn't that he forced me and it wasn't like I felt violated or anything, it just felt weird. Like I was kissing my brother or something. He pulled away and I tried to explain how I felt to him, but he got a determined look on his face and said 'if you didn't like it then I'm gonna try again'." She looked up at Logan when she heard a slight rumble from his direction. "Don't be grouchy. He was a teenage boy. He didn't hurt me; he was just confused that I didn't feel the same way." She saw him smooth his face back into the blank expression that she could only assume meant he was listening intently so she stepped back into storyteller mode.

"Well, the second kiss felt different. At first it felt like an electric shock, like if you touch metal after scuffing your feet for a long time, before it got deeper, almost like if you put a fork in a socket. Then I started getting a lot of his feelings and memories. I saw all of my memories of the times we were together, only from his point of view. He had been reading into our friendship for years and every time I hung out with him was even more proof that I wanted him like he wanted me. But I didn't understand how I was seeing these things or what was happening.

Of course it was late summer and I was wearing this tiny sundress, plenty of skin showing, so when Cody collapsed onto me we were touching everywhere from his face to his toes. He was shaking against me, almost seizing and his nose started bleeding." She had to stop for a minute and take a few deep breaths, reminding herself that it wasn't happening, that hyperventilating wouldn't be helpful and that she was safe with her seat belt wrapped around her. "I was shorter and not as strong then, I couldn't move him off of me and no one could hear me screaming because of the loud music outside. I lay under him until he suddenly shuddered and stopped jerking around. I was no longer getting any of his energy or his thoughts invading my head. Somehow, maybe with emergency crazy strength or something, I got him shifted onto the floor and I sat there for a minute seeing nothing and drowning in the sea in my head. I had an instant headache and couldn't think. My mother broke me out of it when she opened the door to my room, trying to find the two of us. I was finally able to focus on Cody, lying on the floor getting paler by the minute, and realized I had killed my best friend's body."

She stopped at Logan's sharp look in her direction, almost stuttering at the halt in her rhythm because she kept turning off her brain to be able to keep talking. His voice was gravely when he asked, "You killed his body?"

"Oh. Everyone else says he's dead, but he's not really. He's no longer in his own body, but he's in mine. I have his whole persona in my head now. He ages with me and grows as I grow; changes with the different things I experience. Though I guess because I am the only one that can see and talk to him, he is dead to the rest of the world. It's not like that with the people that I just absorb without killing. Those copies don't age or change that much but they are aware of what I happens to me and believe me, they all have their own opinions about my life." She looked at him, asking with her expression if they are okay to continue. She took his nod as her cue.

"So, mother looked horrified and started yelling for my father to get up here and he must of heard her somehow because he came storming in. I had always been a daddy's girl and I ran to him immediately, throwing my arms around his neck. I started getting his thoughts right away, no hesitation this time, and the predominate note in them all was 'not my daughter, this isn't my daughter'. I let go of him as soon as I could and he passed out for a few minutes. By then, half of the neighborhood had heard the commotion and come to investigate like good southerners. They took over my room and saw Cody lying on the floor with my father next to him. Mother was muttering something about changelings and my father was just waking up when Cody's mom came in and started wailing about her dead child. I was trying to console her, or Cody was with my mouth anyway, talking about how he was right there in front of her, she just had to look at him. She passed out. Father then got to his feet, made all the guests leave and called the cops.

When they showed up, it was devastating. Like I said, small town. My friend's dad was the sheriff and I knew all the cops by name. I tried to explain what happened, but Cody kept coming out too and I think we just confused everyone. Father was still weak but he was aware enough to be able to insist on having me committed to a mental hospital until I could 'calm down and no longer be a danger to society'. Mother just let him do what he wanted. I think she was in shock over the whole thing." She sighed. "I went to the mental hospital that night. They kept me drugged pretty much all of the time and my parents came to visit me only once during the six months that I was there. No one in the south wants to be different. Everyone that doesn't fit in the cookie cutter mold- white, church going citizen with a family of 2.5 kids and a dog- must be evil, stupid or unworthy of decency from others. Christ," she laughed bitterly, "they would still have lynch mobs if they could get away with it.

I guess the neighbors wouldn't leave my parents alone. The one time they came to visit, all they talked about was how much trouble I was for them and they seemed convinced that I was some sort of changeling creature who took over their daughter. My personality shifted slightly when I picked up Cody, which I understood but no one else did, and they took that as more proof. The town kept harassing them about 'bringing such evil' into their peaceful community. Amazing, isn't it, how quickly everyone forgot that my family had lived in that town for six generations?

The town, my parents included, was convinced that I had somehow brought this on myself; only everyone else, cut off from me, had started turning anger and hatred onto my parents. They pulled me out of that hospital and we moved to Meridian, Mississippi where I didn't exist. They painted themselves as a couple cursed with infertility and who had never had children. They made sure to buy a house with a large attic, which became my prison. I don't know what had happened, but something had pushed up the timeline for the move. The parents had wanted to have my prison completed before we moved in but, as it was, they had to have a contractor come in to finish the bathroom.

This was in the beginning of the PM timeline for me so I still listened to what my parents. They had spun the whole imprisonment thing as what was best for me, telling me stories about the bounty hunters and about how people wanted me dead for killing Cody. They coached me to tell the contractor that I was agoraphobic, meaning that I was afraid to leave the house. I stayed upstairs with him the whole time he was working on the bathroom.

The contractor, Tim, was number three to join the party in my head. He thought that I would be fair game. He'd picked up on the fact that my parents weren't at all warm towards me and he thought I wasn't right in the head because of my phobia. Also, he tended to appreciate underage girls. He figured no one would notice or care if he played around with me a little and trust me, he was completely correct on that count.

I was on my bed, reading, when I was jerked upright and forced onto my knees leaning over the edge. He shifted behind me and used his weight to hold my chest down while he fumbled with is belt. He just kept oozing these nasty words, going on about how much I was going to enjoy him and how much of a slut I was as such a young age. I was panicked and had no idea what to do. I was yelling out for my parents until he used his shirt to gag me. It smelled like greasy sweat and tasted like licking the bottom of a shoe. And my parents never came to help me, cementing my lack of trust for the rest of my life.

Not that I really needed help in the long run. In a way, Tim got what he wanted. I did suck him of. He made the mistake of reaching up under my shirt to grab my breast. Getting his every thought and feeling first hand from the connection I get through my skin was not what I needed. He fell backwards off of me, thank god, and I scrambled away and into the bathroom.

On the upside, I picked up the knowledge to finish the bathroom on my own meaning that no one else needed to invade my territory. That's what I was doing when the guy came to, ran down the stairs and locked the door behind him, yelling for my parents the whole time. They must have bribed him into silence or something because no one ever came over to the house looking for a mutant in the attic. I finished the bathroom, my father took away all the tools and that was the last time I had saw another person's face for 3 years."

She let herself slump back into the seat, exhausted from the sharing session and shaking slightly from the reemerging fear. Who knew that simple talking could drag this much energy and anguish out of you? She closed her eyes, trying to shut up everyone in her brain that had started talking. Turning the radio to a classic rock station helped and she just focused on the beat for a while, letting Logan absorb what she had said. She had no earthly idea what he could be thinking but with her luck, he was looking for the next convenient place to drop her. She rolled her head to the left on the headrest, studying his face as it shifted from blank to thinking to frowning.

"That's gotta be on the list of worst stories ever lived kid and I'm sure Xavier would have lots of really important questions to ask about it, but I'm no good at this shit. What I did pick up on was that what you told me only accounts for three 'people at the party' as you put it. I'm five. Who was four?"

She was going to die. As soon as she heard the number mentioned, she always got slightly short of breath but this was worse. Her lungs wouldn't expand and she felt like she was flopping around, a fish out of water. She threw on her headphones, cranking Kiss up to the max and padlocked door number four, trying to get some air into her starving cells. Her hands reached over almost of their own accord and grabbed the wheel, drawing on strength she shouldn't have had to wrench it away from Logan. He looked shocked but let her guide them into a rest stop, where she released the wheel and flung her door open before they were completely stopped.

"I can't talk about that now. It's too close. I have to move. I just have to move," she heard herself yell back as she took off into a hard run, feet pounding the packed dirt of the dog walk looping the rest area. She passed Logan on the first lap and noticed he was leaning against the hood of the car, puffing a cigar and scowling into space. She just hoped he didn't try to stop her anytime soon or leave her behind in the middle of nowhere. She dragged her eyes back to the ground in front of her feet, ignoring everything except for the physical exertion and the chaos in her head.




Chapter End Notes:
Hopefully you know the drill by now. Let me know what you thought. Thanks. Kiss Kiss!

Only one quote in this one.
"Oh, what men dare do! What men..."- Much Ado About Nothing
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